Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

“No, sir,” said the girl.

“What a nuisance!” I said. “I’m most awfully sorry to bother you, but I think I must have been misdirected, and looking for a Mr. Smith at this time of night is rather a hopeless sort of job.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“The other is I’ve forgotten the name of the people in the next house. I mean they said, ‘It’s next door to the So-and-So’s,’ and I’ve forgotten the So-and-So’s name.” She smiled and looked friendly, so I went on, “I suppose you can’t help me? I’d know the name if I heard it. Who lives here?”

“Mr. Arbuthnot Markham, sir,” she said.

I must have looked a prize ass. My jaw fell as if it had dropped about a yard. And just as I was trying to think of something to say, a door up at the end of the hall opened and I heard Anna Lang laugh.

I didn’t dally. I said “Thanks ever so much,” and I made tracks. I’d know Anna’s laugh in a million. Anna and Arbuthnot Markham… Oh, my hat!

I walked about a dozen yards for the look of the thing, and then I ran until I struck another holly bush-that beastly drive was full of them. It pulled me up, and I got behind some sort of cypress and did a bit of a think.

Anna and Arbuthnot Markham… No wonder I’d had a feeling about the place. I suppose the car was waiting for her. It seemed pretty late for her to be visiting Arbuthnot anyway. Uncle John is strait-laced, and I wondered what he’d say if he knew. And then all the things I’d been keeping in the back of my mind came out with a rush. If Anna was behind this business, it had a very ugly look indeed. She had told me she’d forged my uncle’s signature, and she’d told me she was in a blue funk about his finding out. On the top of this, Z.10 tried to induce me to-let us say, tip my uncle into a pond.

I had to put that away again. I couldn’t think it out standing in a garden bed behind somebody else’s cypresses. I felt as if it wanted concentration, and a wet towel round the head, and a good bit of midnight oil.

I came out on to the drive, and all of a sudden I thought what a mug I’d been. I ought to have had a look at the car before I marched up and rang the bell. I wondered if it was too late now. I went back, listening for the sound of the engine, but everything was quite still. The front door was shut. I could see the car plainly enough in the light that came through the fanlight. I wondered if there would be a chauffeur hanging about. I rather thought not, because in a house that size he’d get asked in.

I came up cautiously. There was no one in the car. Then I went round to the back of it and felt the number plate. There wasn’t any paper over it now; but then I never expected there would be-he would have stopped somewhere along Churt Row and taken it off. I hadn’t a match, or I’d have got the number-not that it really mattered very much. I had a shot at feeling for it, but the figures were not raised. I went round to the front again. There was a rug on the bonnet, a dark one. That told me nothing-most rugs are dark, and all I had really noticed about Z.10’s rug was that it was there.

I got round to the side away from the house and started to open the driver’s door. I knew that if I sat in the car, I should have a very good idea whether it was the one I had sat in before; the feel of the seat, the angle of the windscreen, the set of the wheel, are the sort of things that register themselves in your mind. I had got the handle half turned, when the front door opened. I stood there like a fool, looking through the car at the brightly lighted hall and steps. Some one had switched on an outside light as well. It looked like a stage setting with the leading lady in the limelight.

Anna was the leading lady. She wore a gold dress and a gold and crimson shawl. I’ll admit she looked handsome.

Arbuthnot Markham was just behind her, and she was talking to him over her shoulder. There didn’t seem to be any servant about.

I didn’t wait of course. I let go of the handle and got behind the nearest pillar. The portico ran right across the drive, with pillars along the edge of it. I got behind the middle pillar, and was glad to find it supplemented by some sort of creeper which almost doubled its width. I could hear their voices coming nearer, and then I heard the slam of the door.

I looked through the creeper and saw the shape of Anna’s head against the light. She was in the driver’s seat, so there wasn’t any chauffeur. I hadn’t time to wonder what had happened to Z.10, because I’d hardly seen Anna before Arbuthnot came round the back of the car. I just saw his white shirt-front, and then he turned away from me and leaned on the window by Anna.

It was a very uncomfortable position for me. Eavesdropping isn’t much in my line. I hadn’t the slightest interest in Anna’s private affairs, but I didn’t see my way out of the situation. If they were going to talk about their own concerns, I should feel like a cad. But if, by any chance, they were going to talk about Z.10, or my uncle, or me, I was bound to listen.

Well, first of all he said something so low that I didn’t catch it; but I heard her say,

“I can’t, Corinna Lee is staying. I’m not advertising this trip.”

He said something again, and she laughed and said,

“You’ll have to put up with it.”

That sounds most frightfully ordinary, but it struck me no end. I’ve known Anna for about twenty-six years, and what struck me was this-she was speaking like an ordinary human being, not acting. It came over me that she felt, in some queer sort of way, at home with Arbuthnot; she didn’t trouble to act for him.

I was so taken up with thinking this that I must have missed something, because all of a sudden he was saying,

“To-morrow?”

And she chipped in with, “Yes, to-morrow. I told you- it’s his wedding day.”

That brought me up sharp, because it brought us all back to Uncle John. He’s tremendously keen on anniversaries, and his wedding-day is always kept with a lot of fuss- flowers in front of my aunt’s portrait, and a queer sort of ceremonial, going through her letters, and her jewelry, and their wedding presents. I’d forgotten the exact date, but it came somewhere in this week.

Arbuthnot said, “You’ve made up your mind?”

She sounded vexed when she said, “Yes, of course I have. I don’t know why I hesitated. He’s for it.” And she laughed again, a hard angry laugh.

I had never heard Anna talk like that in my life. It interested me very much. I wondered if it was Uncle John who was “for it,” and exactly what that meant. And whilst I was wondering she started the car.

I heard two things more, and I’m hanged if I can make head or tail of them.

Anna said, just out of the blue as it were,

“They’ll be sewn inside his coat.”

And Arbuthnot Markham said,

“It’s risky. Are you sure of her?”

Then she called out, “Good-night,” and he said angrily, “You’re in a deuce of a hurry!”

And that was all.

The car went away down the drive, and Arbuthnot went into the house and shut the door.

September 25th-I went home and went to bed. I didn’t think I should sleep, but I was dog-tired and I pitched into sleep without knowing anything about it. One minute I was thinking I was going to lie awake for the rest of the night, and the next I was waking up into what I thought was a thunderstorm, but it was only Mrs. Bell banging on the door.

It wasn’t till I was up and in the middle of shaving that I remembered I’d been having a dream about Isobel. It worried me, because I couldn’t remember what I had dreamt. I kept on trying, and it wasn’t any good.

As soon as I’d had breakfast, I did up all Z.10’s money and went off the nearest post-office to buy a registered envelope and push it off. I kept three pounds as salary for the last week-I didn’t think it was reasonable to leave myself without a penny at a moment’s notice.